An Online Library Satisfaction Survey will be conducted from January 23 to 27, 2017, to determine the level of satisfaction and needs of selected college students and senior high school relative to available resources, facilities and staff of the Department of Libraries for SY 2016-2017.

Be a part of library development. Speak up and be counted. Let your thoughts be heard. Take time to answer the survey.

Congratulations to members of the UE Red Warriors Weightlifting Team for their outstanding performance in the recent National Batang Pinoy Games held within November 27 to December 2, 2016, in Tagum City, Davao del Norte!

The Warrior Weightlifters won a total of seven medals: two gold, three silver and two bronze medals.

Congratulations to UE Red Warriors Men’s Lawn Tennis Team Coach Numero G. Lim on his appointment as the Coach of the National Lawn Tennis Team, effective this January 2017!

In addition to his appointment, the Warrior Tennis Coach (in the photo) was elected as a Member of the Philippine Tennis Association’s Board of Trustees last December 2016.

A BS Chemical Engineering graduate of the Mapua Institute of Technology, Coach Lim was an International Tennis Federation (ITF) junior world no. 87 and Asian no. 5 tennis player. His father, Alberto Sr., is a BS Accountancy graduate of the University of the East. His younger brother, Alberto Jr. or “AJ,” is currently a freshman taking up Bachelor of Business Administration, major in Marketing Management at the UE College of Business Administration-Manila. AJ is a member of the UE Red Warriors Men’s Lawn Tennis Team and has already competed in the French Open and Wimbledon, among other international tennis events.

Coach Lim, who has been the Coach of UE’s Men’s Lawn Tennis Team since 2012, engineered the Warrior tennis players’ back-to-back 2nd Runner-up finish in the UAAP Seasons 77 and 78 Lawn Tennis Tournaments. Coach Lim and the rest of the team are seeking the UE community’s support as they represent Lualhati’s University—and aim for UE’s first ever UAAP Lawn Tennis championship—at the UAAP 79 Lawn Tennis Tournament, which will be held from February 18 to March 24, 2017, at the Rizal Memorial Tennis Center.

Prior to that, Coach Lim will be mentoring AJ as the latter competes in the Australian Open this coming January 21 to 28, 2017.

Dr. Virgilio Senadren Almario, NA, a UE alumnus and National Artist for Literature who is also the incumbent Chairman of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (or the Commission on the Filipino Language), has been elected as the new Chairperson of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts by the 15-member NCCA Board of Commissioners.

Dr. Almario’s new NCCA appointment comes not long after UE’s recent conferment upon him of the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, on September 20, 2016, at the Conference Hall in UE Manila. The conferment was a highlight of UE’s 70th Foundation Anniversary. Chairman Almario, NA is the 33rd recipient of an honorary UE degree in the University of the East’s 70-year history.

The NCCA term of Chairman Almario, NA, is from 2017 to 2019. He had been the NCCA Executive Director from 1998 to 2001.

The National Commission for Culture and the Arts is composed of representatives from the legislative, executive and private sectors.

As indicated in Section 9 of Republic Act 7356, the law which created the Commission, the NCCA is mandated to (1) encourage the continuing and balanced development of a pluralistic culture by the people themselves; (2) conserve and promote the nation’s historical and cultural heritage; (3) ensure the widest dissemination of artistic and cultural products among the greatest number across the country and overseas for their appreciation and enjoyment…with the cooperation of all…concerned agencies, public and private; (4) preserve and integrate traditional culture and its various creative expressions as a dynamic part of the national cultural mainstream; and, (5) to ensure that standards of excellence are pursued in programs and activities implementing policies…stated, it shall encourage and support continuing discussion and debate, through symposia, workshops, publications, etc., on the highest norms available in the matrix of Philippine culture.

Also known for his pen name Rio Alma, Chairman Almario, NA, is a Filipino artist, poet, critic, translator, editor, teacher and cultural manager. Initially a high school teacher in his native Bulacan, Virgilio Almario began his poetry career in the early 1960s as a UE student, taking up subjects under the University’s Bachelor in Secondary Education and Master of Arts in Education courses and becoming the Filipino section editor-columnist of the Dawn, UE’s well-known student newspaper.

He is credited for spearheading the second successful modernist movement in Filipino poetry together with fellow UE alumni Rogelio Mangahas and Teo Antonio. Dr. Almario’s earliest literary criticism pieces were collected in the 1972 book Ang Makata sa Panahon ng Makina, which is now considered the first book of literary criticism in Filipino and the first of his many books to date.

Chairman Almario, NA, has received numerous awards, including several Palanca awards, two grand prizes from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Makata ng Taon of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) award for Literature, and the Southeast Asia Write Award of Bangkok. He was proclaimed National Artist for Literature in 2003.

Congratulations to the UE College of Dentistry graduates who passed the latest licensure examination for dentists held on December 1 to 3, 2016 (Theoretical Phase), and January 4 to 7, 2017 (Practical Phase)!

They are led by UE’s latest topnotcher: 3rd Placer Dr. Mark Cameron Jabile Acub (exam average: 84.07%), an April 2016 graduate of the UE College of Dentistry!

UE CDent graduates shone through in terms of passing rate in both phases of the exam. They earned a Theoretical Phase passing rate of 85.71% (over the national passing rate of 52.61%) and a whopping 100% passing rate in the Practical Phase (whereas the national passing rate is 99.35%).

Congratulations to the UE College of Dentistry, to the new Warrior Topnotcher and to all of you, new Warrior-Dentists!

It’s all systems go for the UE CAMANAVA Studies Third Biennial International Conference, which will be held on February 3 to 5, 2017, at the Multipurpose Hall 3 of the Dr. Lucio C. Tan Building in the University of the East’s Caloocan campus.

The conference theme is Emerging Discourses and Issues in Sustainable Development, as this year’s conference is aimed to help advance sustainable development by providing a venue for the exchange of ideas and findings of research on the emerging discourses and issues in such a development. As such, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has officially endorsed the event through a memorandum by the CHED Chairperson herself, Dr. Patricia B. Licuanan.

The coverage of the papers to be presented in plenary or parallel sessions of the conference includes the following fields: (1) Agricultural Science and Technology, (2) Business and Hospitality Management, (3) Environmental Science and Management, (4) Engineering and Technology, (5) Humanities and Communication, (6) Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and (7) Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Serving as Keynote Speaker will be Dr. William D. Dar, the President of the InangLupa Movement and former Director General of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

There will be six Plenary Speakers, namely:

Dr. Badaruddin Mohamed, Head of the Sustainable Tourism Research Cluster and School of Housing, Building and Planning in Universiti Sains Malaysia, who will discuss “Sustaining Tourism Destinations amidst Regional Competition”;

Dr. Budi Guntoro, Faculty Member on Animal Science of the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia, who will tackle “Problems and Challenges of Livestock Development in Indonesia”;

Dr. Marlowe U. Aquino, Project Manager of the IFAD-APRACA FinServAccess Project in Bangkok, Thailand, who will talk about “The Inclusion of Rural Finance Access in Development-Oriented Initiatives in Sustaining Community Development in Selected Asian Countries” (IFAD-APRACA stands for International Fund for Agricultural Development-Asia-Pacific Rural and Agricultural Credit Association);

Dr. Weerapon Thongma, Associate Professor and Vice President at Maejo University in Chiang Mai, Thailand;

Arch. Tito Moses S. Encinas, President and CEO of Mohri and P. A. Associates Inc., Philippines, who will expound on “Typhoon-Resilient School Buildings: The JICA Experience” (JICA refers to the Japan International Cooperation Agency); and

Dr. Liza G. Battad, Chief for Planning and Information Management of the Philippine Carabao Center, who will share about “Milka Krem and Social Marketing: Building a Community-Based Dairy Enterprise Build-Up.”

Now on its third year, the UE CAMANAVA Studies Biennial Conference is a higher education forum organized and conducted by the UE CAS Caloocan that promotes basic and applied research in the arts, the humanities, the sciences and allied disciplines. The conference provides a venue for extensive presentations from a variety of paper presenters ranging from students to faculty members and school officials and hailing from within UE’s Caloocan and Manila campuses and other institutions within and beyond CAMANAVA.

For further details, please call (632) 364-1497 or email <crisol.bruza@ue.edu.ph>.

Three UE CCSS students and their research adviser, CCSS professor Dr. Rex P. Bringula, presented two different research papers at the 14th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia (MoMM 2016).

MoMM 2016, which was held at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel in Singapore on November 28 to 30, 2016, was a double-blind peer-reviewed conference whose proceedings will be indexed in the ACM Digital Library and Scopus. (ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery.)

The first of the two papers, titled “Effects of Different Types of Feedback of a Mobile-assisted Learning Application on Linear Equations on Students’ Mathematics Performance,” was developed by Kharl John Rayala, Bernadette Anne Pascual, Jan Sepli De Leon and Kevin Sendino, with Mr. Rayala and Ms. Pascual presenting the paper at the conference.

Jairus Lyndel Belza, Sherwin Belarmino and Mary Claire Chavez are currently developing the study titled “Teacher AICA: A Mobile-based Intelligent Tutoring System for Laws of Exponents.” Mr. Belza presented this paper at the said conference. (AICA stands for Artificially Intelligent Cognizant Agent.)

The first paper was accepted at the conference as a full paper, underscoring the significant contributions of the study in advancing mobile computing. It was also selected to appear in a special issue of a respected journal.

Dr. Bringula, who is currently Research and Development Coordinator of the UE CCSS, also served as the Session Chair of MoMM 2016’s Human Center Computing Session.

All of the participating students are 4th-year Bachelor of Science in Computer Science students except that Mr. De Leon is BS Information Technology senior and Mr. Sendino is now a graduate, having earned his BS Computer Science degree from UE in December 2016.

UE Red Warriors Lawn Tennis Team member Alberto “AJ” Lim Jr., one of the world’s top junior tennis players, was named over the Christmas break as the newest, and youngest, member of the Philippine Davis Cup Team! This is in line with the team’s coming competition with its Indonesian counterpart this February, in Manila.

AJ is a UE freshman taking up Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, major in Marketing Management, at the UE College of Business Administration-Manila. He was also a high school freshman of the UE Elementary and Secondary Laboratory Schools (ESLS) before transferring to Colegio de San Juan de Letran.

AJ, who learned tennis from his father, UE BS Accountancy alumnus Alberto Lim Sr., as early as four years old, has already competed in the French Open and the Wimbledon, among other international tennis events.

AJ is the younger brother of UE Red Warriors Lawn Tennis Team Coach Numero Lim, who had steered the Warrior-Tennis players to back-to-back 2nd Place finishes in Seasons 77 and 78 of the UAAP Tennis Tournament.

Prior to the Davis Cup match in February, AJ, under the tutelage of Coach Lim, will compete in the Australian Open, which will run from January 21 to 28, 2017.

The University of the East Graduate School will launch a new academic program, Doctor of Philosophy in Multidisciplinary Metropolitan Studies (PhD MMS), in the first semester of school year 2017-2018.

This pioneering program in the U-Belt and metropolitan communities in the country draws its theoretical framework and research methods (historiography, ethnography, phenomenology and quantitative) from various social science disciplines applied to historical, cultural, educational, societal and political phenomena.

It is an advanced study in the social sciences that will: (1) generate knowledge on metropolitan phenomena with implications for metropolitan and national development and (2) promote comparison of human experiences across societies/cultures for global understanding. With a certain degree of flexibility, the program is a means to enrich and align the disciplinary orientation of the graduate students on program with the academic disciplines that they teach and pursue in the social sciences.

Through comparison of human experiences across metropolitan societies in the Philippines, Asia and other parts of the world, this multidisciplinary study is to be taught by highly trained faculty members with specialized training in the following disciplines: History, Applied Anthropology and Political Science—and hailing from prestigious universities in the country and abroad.

The 52-unit program is divided as follows: 15 core, 12 research, 13 major and 12 dissertation units, and a comprehensive examination.

Admission requirements include the following: 1) passing the UE Graduate School entrance examination, 2) preferably an undergraduate and a holder of a master’s degree in the social sciences or related fields, 3) and passing the interview.

Inquiries can be made by phone at 735-5471 local 358 (Tuesdays to Saturdays, within 9 a.m. to 12 noon or within 1 to 6 p.m.) or email to atpaalajr@gmail.com

In November of this year, the University prepared its third five-year Strategic Plan (2017-2022), since I joined UE in early 2016. As part of the planning process I also prepared a 10-year (2006-2016) overview of our achievements during the period. I am happy to tell you that, in general, it was a very positive report. Together, we have achieved much to improve the University and I wish to take this occasion to thank all of you: faculty, staff, students, alumni, academic and administrative officers, and the Board of Trustees of the University. As I said in my investiture speech, for UE to succeed we must help each other, “…no President or strategic plan, no matter how good, will result in an excellent University. It is you who will make it happen. And I am confident that you will make it happen.” And you did!

In 2007 we had three accredited programs, all level II and all in UE Manila. Now there are 48 accredited programs: 33 in Manila and 15 in Caloocan, two of which are level IV, with another one just waiting for the results of the visit made recently. Only 10 programs are not accredited, five of which are new and one has no accreditation process in place. The other four do not meet the requirements. Because of the high percentage of accredited programs, our autonomous status has been extended to 2019 and the UE College of Computer Studies and Systems has been upgraded from Center of Development to Center of Excellence. Our next challenge is meeting the upgraded standards of CHED to continue to merit our autonomy.

This year we started the implementation of the most ambitious education reform undertaken by government since our independence, the K to 12 Reform Program. We have 5,000 UE students in Grade 11 who will continue to Grade 12 and expect another new batch of 5,000, maybe even more, in 2017. We are busy preparing our infrastructure and other resources to accommodate the expected increase of SHS students next year, although there will be a corresponding decline in tertiary level students with much fewer freshmen and sophomores. Although the number of students overall will not decline, the revenue will decrease dramatically because of the much lower tuition fee at the basic education level compared to the tertiary level.

Quality improvements, attractive degree programs, infrastructure development and aggressive marketing efforts have all paid off in the continuing increased enrollment in the University, up to 59,920 in AY 2015-2016 from 37,411 in 2006-2007. The students continue to bring honor to the University through their achievements in their academic, cultural and sports-related activities. This year three of our students got 1st and 2nd prizes in the Petron and Shell National Arts Competitions and the IPA Digital Painting Photography Competition in New York. We had three topnotchers in the Dentistry Board examination, two in the CPA, five in the Engineering Boards and one in the Librarian’s Board. Most of our programs now show higher than national passing percentages in the boards and some are 100% (Dentistry and Mechanical Engineering of UE Manila). I want to thank our faculty, staff and, of course, the students for their achievements.

The UE community (faculty, staff, students and alumni) continue to receive awards and accolades for their continuing commitment to serve our countrymen in various endeavors, such as Brigada Eskwela, feeding programs, computer training for teachers, students and out-of-school youth, dental and medical missions, blood donation, environmental awareness, clean-up drives, disaster preparedness, disaster relief operations and similar activities in community service and extension. The extension and community activities have helped UE in its marketing efforts for SHS. The high schools and communities we have helped through these activities recognize the caring and nurturing characteristics of UE and want to entrust their children to us.

Research and publications by our faculty and students are the hallmarks of an excellent university. I am pleased to report that there is a continuing increase in the finished research projects, papers published and paper presentations here and abroad, not only by faculty members but also by students. Our faculty members are given incentives for publications and some financial support to enable them to present in international and national conferences.

Our international agreements continue to flourish and have proved to be very beneficial to the University. Some of our faculty members have gone for advanced studies in their campuses, mostly for free and some with partial support from CHED and UE. One faculty member who availed of such support just finished his Ph.D. Our students have been accommodated for their on-the-job training, often with allowances from our counterparts. They continue to send their students for language training in UE, which gave extra income to the University and the faculty. Soka University (Japan), on the other hand, sent two of its students as exchange scholars to UE this year. Our College of Education continues to partner with UNESCO in preparing multimedia instructional materials and training teachers in the use of these materials.

The alumni continue to be a source of inspiration and support to UE. They share their expertise and experiences with our students as our speakers in various fora, and some serve as commencement speakers and members of thesis defense panels. They continue to support us with scholarship funds. The Beta Epsilon fraternity and the Hiyas ng Silangan sorority, both accounting honors societies, celebrated their 50th anniversary this year, highlighted by the launching of a coffeetable book with their individual stories.

As you all know, we had a tragedy this year, with the fire in early April gutting the UE Manila CAS building and parts of the Chapel and the College of Engineering (CEng’g) building. We decided to completely tear down the Chapel and the Engineering building and build an eight-story building (with the possibility of extending to 10 stories) which will house CAS, CEng’g, CCSS, the College of Education and the Chapel. The building now occupied by the College of Education will continue to house the Science and HRM laboratories while serving the additional SHS students. In addition, we will add to the current six stories of the Tan Yan Kee Academic Building in UE Caloocan to house the increasing number of students, including the incoming SHS students, while we continue to prepare the plans for UE Laguna. The new constructions in the Manila and Caloocan campuses will proceed alongside the already ongoing retrofitting of the Dalupan Building.

This year, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the University with a variety of academic and cultural activities highlighting the many achievements of the University over the years. I wish to again thank everyone for a job well done.

May the good Lord continue to bless all of us and our beloved University. I wish all of you a blessed Christmas and a peaceful year ahead. My special greetings go to our non-Christian brothers and sisters and their families during this holiday season.